The Connecticut Huskies might be the hottest team in college basketball. The San Diego State Aztecs have lost twice all season. So it will be two pretty good teams going at it when San Diego State, the two seed in the East region, meets third-seeded UConn in an NCAA tournament regional semifinal game Thursday night at the Honda Center in Anaheim (7:15 p.m. Eastern, CBS).
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The original 68-team field for this year's NCAA Tournament has been pared down to the Sweet 16. There are three No.1 seeds left as well as four double-digit seeded teams, and no region has followed suit will all top four seeds advancing on. The following is a look at my NCAA Tournament predictions for the remaining teams that have a legitimate shot at winning a national title along with the value their current futures odds provide. All odds quoted are courtesy of Sports Interaction.
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There are four double-digit seeds remaining in the Sweet 16 this year, the most in any year since 1999. That's an amazing statistic, but what's even more amazing is that Florida State, VCU, and Richmond are all in the Southwest bracket. That means that Kansas, the No. 1 seed, can make it all the way to the Final Four without playing a team seeded higher than ninth. No wonder they are now favored to win the tournament at some books.
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We can often learn a lot in sports betting about what is likely to happen in the future from what has happened in the past. That can especially be true with something like the NCAA Tournament where we see the same teams playing in increasingly pressure-filled games over a short time frame. Here's a day-by-day look back at the first four days of the 2011 tournament from a betting perspective so we can see which NCAA Tournament betting trends have emerged that could be useful:
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A - Ashton Gibbs. The Pitt hoopster has apparently had enough of school and ,conveniently enough, he decided that just two days after his top-seeded Panthers were bounced from the NCAA Tournament by No. 8 seed Butler. Gibbs tweeted, &quot;Man school just isn't for me smh.&quot; The tweet was published in a daily Pittsburgh newspaper. We are led to believe that 'smh' is the name of some European basketball league where Gibbs will be playing next.
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This was the round in which I expected Kansas to get their first legitimate challenge of the tournament. That may still be the case, but I was quite sure it would come from Louisville, not Richmond. Judging by all of the complaining, most people who filled out a bracket thought the same basic thing. Just because it's a long way from a predictable matchup, though, doesn't mean it's not an intriguing one.
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For the weeks and even months leading up to the NCAA Tournament college basketball fans are fascinated by seeding. Who is going to get into the tournament? What seed will they get when they get there? Which teams will be No. 1s? It's an obsession. Once the tournament starts, though, that fixation on seeding largely goes out the door in favor of March Madness brackets, upsets, and everything else that is great about the tournament. In the free time between rounds, though, I miss all of the seeding talk and speculation.
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And then there were eight. The chaos of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament has boiled down to a much saner and manageable number of games this week -- just four Sweet 16 games per day on Thursday and Friday. There might be fewer, but this weekend's contests are no less interesting than the crazy ones we have just witnessed. Here's a look at the NCAA Tournament Odds, Sweet 16 variety, and some predictions from my first reaction to each pairing (all NCAA Tournament odds are from BetUS):
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The bottom of the bracket in the Southeast Region has followed suit with the No.3 seed BYU Cougars squaring off against the No.2 seed Florida Gators in the Sweet 16 round of this year's NCAA Men's Tournament. Thursday's game from the Superdome in New Orleans is scheduled to tip at 7:27 p.m. (EST) and it will be broadcast nationally on TBS.
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With the NCAA Tournament's first week a thing of the past, it's time to take a new look at those brackets and re-evaluate your betting options. Certainly oddsmakers are doing that. For example, at Bodog on the prop where you can bet on which conference the national champion comes from, the odds have shifted fairly dramatically. The Big 12 - i.e. Kansas - was the favorite before the Big Dance started. And
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The initial field of 68 teams for this year's NCAA Tournament has been pared down to the Sweet 16 survivors who will continue their quest for a national title this upcoming Thursday and Friday. The following is a brief look at all four matchups and provide some betting predictions for each day along with the NCAA Tournament odds as provided by Sportsbook.com.
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These are giddy times to be a Michigan fan. My beloved Wolverines looked to be en route to a season almost as disappointing as last year's when they started conference play with an ugly 1-6 record. A switch flipped, though, and this team hasn't looked back since. They were 9-3 down the stretch in conference play, won a game in the Big Ten Tournament, crushed the life out of Tennessee in their opening game, and showed without question that this is a team moving in the right direction.
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The Butler Bulldogs rode a wave last spring all the way to college basketball's National Championship game. And they added to their recent tournament resume Thursday with a buzzer-beating first-round victory over Old Dominion. The Pitt Panthers, meanwhile, entered this season and this NCAA Tournament with great expectations, as they search for that long-elusive Final Four berth.
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Does Saturday afternoon's third-round (that still sounds wrong - damn you First Four!) Southeast Region matchup in Tampa between UCLA and Florida sound rather familiar? It should: Florida beat the Bruins in the 2006 National Championship Game and again in the 2007 Final Four. The winner of this one gets a trip to New Orleans to face the Gonzaga-BYU winner in the Sweet 16.
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As is typical with the first full day of action in the NCAA Tournament, there were blowouts, buzzer beaters, and a couple of bracket-busting victories that came together to validate the madness that is March. The survivors of Thursday's games will now regroup to try and play their way into this year's Sweet 16 in a full state of action this Saturday. The following is a brief look at all eight matchups along with the NCAA Tournament odds as provided by betED. We will also offer some predictions on how the games might go.
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The No. 8 vs. No. 9 game in the Southwest Region of this NCAA Tournament gives us one of those matchups involving a mediocre team from a big conference vs. one of the better teams from a (supposedly) weaker conference. Throw in the fact that one team is going against one of its former coaches and you've got my interest. That's the scene as the Fighting Illini of Illinois get ready to take on Lon Kruger and his UNLV Rebels in Tulsa Friday night (9:20 p.m. EST, TBS).
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F - Free Pizza. In case you needed more reason to cheer for a No. 16 seed on Thursday and Friday, Pizza Hut is upping the ante. If a No. 16 seed does the unthinkable and knocks off a top seed, then Pizza Hut is giving out free pizza throughout the continental United States.
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Perhaps no other region in the NCAA Tournament has as many talented-yet-obviously-flawed teams vying for its slot in the Final Four. There are no less than seven teams that I could see coming out of this region and not be completely surprised. But then again, I won't be stunned if five of those seven teams aren't even playing next weekend. And as a result I get the sense that this is going to be the most chaotic region in the entire bracket and the place where next Monday morning people are pointing to and saying, &quot;Who saw that coming?&quot;
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The Belmont Bruins and the Wisconsin Badgers will face off in the first round of the NCAA tournament at 7:25 p.m. EST on Thursday in Tucson. This appears to be a matchup between two totally opposite squads, as one team loves to push the ball up-and-down the court at both ends while the other loves to play in-your-face defense and a methodical half-court offense.
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So much gets made about conferences come March Madness. The Big East sent a record 11 teams to the NCAA Tournament this year, Conference USA somehow got two bids, the ACC only got four bids but it has plenty of quality and the Big Ten has seven bids and the ability to make plenty of noise. Here are some of the conference-affiliated NCAA Tournament predictions for betting props available on Sportsbook.com
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